The methionine-folate cycle-dependent one-carbon metabolism is implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Since schizophrenia is a developmental disorder, we examined the effects that perturbation of the one-carbon metabolism during gestation has on mice progeny. Pregnant mice were administered methionine equivalent to double their daily intake during the last week of gestation. Their progeny (MET mice) exhibited schizophrenia-like social deficits, cognitive impairments and elevated stereotypy, decreased neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity, and abnormally reduced local excitatory synaptic connections in CA1 neurons...

A central characteristic of living beings is the ability to learn from and respond to their environment leading to habit formation and decision making. This behavior, known as habituation, is universal among all forms of life with a central nervous system, and is also observed in single-cell organisms that do not possess a brain. Here, we report the discovery of habituation-based plasticity utilizing a perovskite quantum system by dynamical modulation of electron localization. Microscopic mechanisms and pathways that enable this organismic collective charge-lattice interaction are elucidated by first-principles theory, synchrotron investigations, ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, and in situ environmental breathing studies...

BACKGROUND: The frequency-following response (FFR) is a scalp-recorded electrophysiological potential reflecting phase-locked activity from neural ensembles in the auditory system. The FFR is often used to assess the robustness of subcortical pitch processing. Due to low signal-to-noise ratio at the single-trial level, FFRs are typically averaged across thousands of stimulus repetitions. Prior work using this approach has shown that subcortical encoding of linguistically-relevant pitch patterns is modulated by long-term language experience...

We review research on brain development and brain evolution in the wasp family Vespidae. Basic vespid neuroanatomy and some aspects of functional neural circuitry are well-characterized, and genomic tools for exploring brain plasticity are being developed. Although relatively modest in terms of species richness, the Vespidae include species spanning much of the known range of animal social complexity, from solitary nesters to highly eusocial species with some of the largest known colonies and multiple reproductives...

Ants exhibit cooperative behaviors and advanced forms of sociality that depend on pheromone-mediated communication. Odorant receptor neurons (ORNs) express specific odorant receptors (ORs) encoded by a dramatically expanded gene family in ants. In most eusocial insects, only the queen can transmit genetic information, restricting genetic studies. In contrast, workers in Harpegnathos saltator ants can be converted into gamergates (pseudoqueens) that can found entire colonies. This feature facilitated CRISPR-Cas9 generation of germline mutations in orco, the gene that encodes the obligate co-receptor of all ORs...

Recent evidence indicates that motor cortex stimulation (MCS) is a potentially effective treatment for chronic neuropathic pain. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the attenuated hyperalgesia after MCS are not completely understood. In this study, we investigated the neural mechanism of the effects of MCS using an animal model of neuropathic pain. After 10 daily sessions of MCS, repetitive MCS reduced mechanical allodynia and contributed to neuronal changes in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Interestingly, inhibition of protein kinase M zeta (PKMζ), a regulator of synaptic plasticity, in the ACC blocked the effects of repetitive MCS...

Neural stem cells (NSCs) persist throughout life in the dentate gyrus and the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ), where they continuously provide new neurons and some glia. These cells are found in specialized niches that regulate quiescence, activation, differentiation, and cell fate choice. A key aspect of the regulatory niche is the vascular plexus, which modulates NSC behavior during tissue homeostasis and regeneration. During aging, NSCs become depleted and dysfunctional, resulting in reduced neurogenesis and poor brain repair...

Neurotransplantation has been recently the focus of interest as a promising therapy to substitute lost cerebellar neurons and improve cerebellar ataxias. However, since cell differentiation and synaptic formation are required to obtain a functional circuitry, highly integrated reproduction of cerebellar anatomy is not a simple process. Rather than a genuine replacement, recent studies have shown that grafted cells rescue surviving cells from neurodegeneration by exerting trophic effects, supporting mitochondrial function, modulating neuroinflammation, stimulating endogenous regenerative processes, and facilitating cerebellar compensatory properties thanks to neural plasticity...

Dietary deficiency of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) is involved in the pathophysiology and etiology of major depressive disorder. Supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) exerts antidepressant-like effect; however, the molecular mechanism of DHA action remains unclear. Here we examined the effects of DHA on the modulation of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), which is essential for neural development, plasticity, neurogenesis, and survival. We demonstrated that DHA treatment significantly increased GDNF release in a concentration dependent manner in rat C6 glioma cells (C6 cells) and primary cultured rat astrocytes, which is also associated with increased expression of GDNF mRNA...

The nature of the code used in the auditory cortex to represent complex auditory stimuli, such as naturally spoken words, remains a matter of debate. Here we argue that such representations are encoded by stable spatio-temporal patterns of firing within cell assemblies known as polychronous groups, or PGs. We develop a physiologically grounded, unsupervised spiking neural network model of the auditory brain with local, biologically realistic, spike-time dependent plasticity (STDP) learning, and show that the plastic cortical layers of the network develop PGs which convey substantially more information about the speaker independent identity of two naturally spoken word stimuli than does rate encoding that ignores the precise spike timings...

Cognitive aging is a leading public health concern with the increasing aging population, but there is still lack of specific interventions directed against it. Recent studies have shown that cognitive function is intimately affected by systemic milieu in aging brain, and improvement of systemic environment in aging brain may be a promising approach for rejuvenating cognitive aging. Here, we sought to study the intervention effects of clinical-grade human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) on cognitive aging in a murine model of aging...

Cognitive dysfunction and decreased mobility from aging and neurodegenerative conditions, such as Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, are major biomedical challenges in need of more effective therapies. Increasing brain resilience may represent a new treatment strategy. Klotho, a longevity factor, enhances cognition when genetically and broadly overexpressed in its full, wild-type form over the mouse lifespan. Whether acute klotho treatment can rapidly enhance cognitive and motor functions or induce resilience is a gap in our knowledge of its therapeutic potential...

Short-term synaptic plasticity is a critical regulator of neural circuits, and largely determines how information is temporally processed. In the olfactory bulb, afferent olfactory receptor neurons respond to increasing concentrations of odorants with barrages of action potentials, and their terminals have an extraordinarily high release probability (Sicard, 1986; Murphy et al. 2004). These features suggest that during naturalistic stimuli, afferent input to the olfactory bulb is subject to strong synaptic depression, presumably truncating the postsynaptic response to afferent stimuli...

Sleep and memory are deeply related, but the nature of the neuroplastic processes induced by sleep remains unclear. Here, we report that memory traces can be both formed or suppressed during sleep, depending on sleep phase. We played samples of acoustic noise to sleeping human listeners. Repeated exposure to a novel noise during Rapid Eye Movements (REM) or light non-REM (NREM) sleep leads to improvements in behavioral performance upon awakening. Strikingly, the same exposure during deep NREM sleep leads to impaired performance upon awakening...

The molecular basis for the decline in experience-dependent neural plasticity over age remains poorly understood. In visual cortex, the robust plasticity induced in juvenile mice by brief monocular deprivation during the critical period is abrogated by genetic deletion of Arc, an activity-dependent regulator of excitatory synaptic modification. Here, we report that augmenting Arc expression in adult mice prolongs juvenile-like plasticity in visual cortex, as assessed by recordings of ocular dominance (OD) plasticity in vivo...

Choline is essential to the development and function of the central nervous system and supplemental choline during development is neuroprotective against a variety of insults, including neurotoxins like dizocilpine (MK-801). MK-801 is an NMDA receptor antagonist that is frequently used in rodent models of psychological disorders, particularly schizophrenia. At low doses, it causes cognitive impairments, and at higher doses it induces motor deficits, anhedonia, and neuronal degeneration. The primary goals of the present study were to investigate whether prenatal choline supplementation protects against the cognitive impairments, motor deficits, and neuropathologies that are precipitated by MK-801 administration in adulthood...

Hemodynamics during dynamic exercise is finely regulated by some neural mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is the metabolic part of the exercise pressor reflex, i.e. the muscle metaboreflex. Hemodynamic response during the metaboreflex is characterised by the recruitment of the reserves in cardiac inotropism, pre-load, after-load and chronotropism. If one of these reserves is exhausted, then the cardiovascular response is achieved by recruiting one of the other reserves, thereby indicating a remarkable plasticity of the control of circulation...

BACKGROUND: Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are an increasing health concern due to persistent behavioral and neurological effects. To better understand these effects, researchers frequently rely on animal injury models. Existing models, however, may not adequately reproduce the mechanism of injury as it occurs in humans. NEW METHOD: Our new model for inducing mTBI in rodents entails acceleration of the animal toward a stationary impact zone to produce rapid rotational movement of the head...

Hearing loss in mature ears can cause functional reorganization of the auditory cortex. The functional reorganization is speculated to negatively affect the outcome of hearing rehabilitation. Therefore, once a hearing loss occurs, it is important to provide auditory input before extensive reorganization in the auditory pathways. We investigated the neural plasticity in auditory cortex after single-sided deafness (SSD) in an adult rat model. The animals were divided into two groups: a normal hearing (NH) and the SSD group...